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The Difference Between Surrender And Victory

Posted by Always To The Right on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 2:16:15 PM

There was no “reversal”

The Washington Post continues a rather dishonest meme regarding the status of forces agreement (SOFA) with Iraq in today’s edition.  They claim that an agreement on withdrawal contradicts “years of promises” to refuse to leave Iraq based on timelines alone.  The Post completely ignores the context of those promises and the changed conditions in Iraq

Bush repeatedly vowed not to withdraw from Iraq until the violence dwindled to levels that Iraq can handle on its own.  We’ve already all but arrived at that point.  The Iraqi Army and its national police have been handling primary security duties for months, and took back control of militia-held areas on their own initiative earlier this year.  In three years — the length of the SOFA — the Iraqis will be able to seal their own borders and defend themselves from assault from both within and without Iraq.

Signing the SOFA doesn’t reverse anything.  We’ve won the war, and we’ve finally won the peace.  Now we’re negotiating future relations with a sovereign democratic ally.

The Post also indulges in another misleading point along these same lines:

In at least one respect, the timeline may complicate what Obama had proposed on the campaign trail: leaving a residual force in Iraq to protect U.S. officials and conduct counter-terrorism operations after the withdrawal of all combat troops. The agreement makes clear that the U.S. government would need approval from the Iraqis if a residual force is to remain beyond Dec. 31, 2011.

Perhaps Michael Abramowitz doesn’t realize this, but the US needs official approval for the forces to remain in Iraq starting on January 1, and needed it implicitly since Iraq held its first constitutional elections.  We’re there under the UN mandate that the Iraqi government supported through several years.  Had the Iraqis demanded that we leave during this period, we would have left.  Even if we were inclined to ignore the sovereign government in Baghdad, the UN would almost certainly have withdrawn its mandate.  This entire paragraph is completely pointless.

If Obama wants to extend a military presence in Iraq, he can negotiate that with the Iraqis, the same as Bush would have had to do, or John McCain had he won the election.  At this moment, the Iraqis want us out entirely, but that may change as 2012 grows nearer.  They may want us to help provide air cover as they rebuild their air force, or provide other military assistance if Iran gets too menacing.  In any case, that was always subject to more negotiation, and the SOFA doesn’t impede any future options at all.

The Post has supported the war, but they still seem to have difficulty understanding it.  There is a vast difference between retreating from one’s enemies and returning after the war has been won.  That was George Bush’s point all along, and this article shows that it still hasn’t been learned.



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Ignorance Is Rage

Posted by Always To The Right on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 1:58:08 PM

Minnesota Recount: Coleman victory certified today, recount tomorrow

Without a doubt, Franken will wind up suing over the absentee ballots after the recount, but the recount has to take place first.  The certification has to take place before the recount.  Franken wants to turn that entire process on its head, demanding that clear election law be ignored in a desperate attempt to hijack the election.  With that kind of attitude, Franken will certainly not blithely accept defeat, even a second time, without attempting to steal a Senate seat through the courts.

If you’re in Minnesota, you can volunteer for recount efforts.  Visit Norm Coleman’s website, call his office at 651-645-0766, or e-mail the office for more information.

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No Media Bias Here

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 11:02:19 PM
New President = New Rules

After years of bashing George W. Bush, MSNBC's Chris Matthews declares his approach to covering Barack Obama next year, and it doesn't sound like hardball: "I want do do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work....It is my job. My job is to help this country." Meanwhile, reporters are gleeful that Obama won the election, with CBS's Byron Pitts declaring that America is now "a more perfect union," even as Time's Nancy Gibbs glows that Obama is a "prince....born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope." And, after 22 months of fawning coverage, a Reuters headline declares: "Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race."
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Road To GOP Redemption: Roll Back The Bailouts, Draw A Line In The Sand

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 10:24:51 PM
Michelle Malkin  •  November 17, 2008 07:36 AM

 


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Axis Of Eiffel

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 10:12:39 PM
French President Sarkozy's recent assertion that U.S. missile defense won't make Europe a safer place should not be used as an excuse by the new administration to shoot it down.

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Cold, Hard Facts

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 10:10:30 PM
Despite record snows and low temperatures around the world last month, a major Al Gore supporter says October was the hottest on record. The only thing being cooked here is not the Earth, but the books.

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James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and global warming alarmist, is Al Gore's favorite scientist, part of that mythical global warming "consensus" that says we are doomed and man is the culprit. On Nov. 10 he announced that last month was the hottest October on record and we were still doomed.

Snowboarders march through snow in Saas-Fee, 1,800 meters above sea level, in Switzerland on Oct. 30 after Snowboard World Cup qualifying was canceled due to heavy snowfall.

Snowboarders march through snow in Saas-Fee, 1,800 meters above sea level, in Switzerland on Oct. 30 after Snowboard World Cup qualifying was canceled due to heavy snowfall.

Dr. Hansen has not only become global warming's Robin to Al Gore's Batman, he has also been a critic of the "deniers," those who dare to insist that the debate is far from over, and that the computer models used can't even predict the past, much less the future.

Hansen has said in the past that "heads of major fossil-fuel companies who spread disinformation about global warming should be 'tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.' " They pay for self-serving studies, and any scientist who disagrees with Gore is obviously on the take.

Christopher Booker, writing in the U.K. Telegraph, reports that Hansen apparently has been spreading disinformation all his own to come up with a conclusion that flies in the face of empirical evidence we can see with our own eyes.

Hansen's claim of the hottest October ever came after reports of unseasonal snow and record low temperatures.

Elsewhere in the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th warmest October in 114 years. So how did Hansen claim it was the warmest?

Booker writes: "The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running."


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If No Givebacks, Then No Bailout

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 10:01:21 PM
We're still against bailing out the Big Three, but it looks like Congress will do it anyway. If so, the very least lawmakers should do is force the automakers and their unions to make sweeping changes.

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Credit this idea to Robert Reich, the former Clinton administration official. We've had lots of disagreements with Reich in the past, and no doubt will in the future. But on this he's right: If a bailout is to be given, the Big Three and their unions must thoroughly revamp their businesses, almost as if it were a bankruptcy. Call it a Chapter 11 Bailout.

Above all, the companies' poisonous contracts with the United Auto Workers union have to be torn up. The problem is that the UAW, under President Ron Gettelfinger, remains adamant: No givebacks. This is financial lunacy.

Today the total market capitalization of the Big Three has fallen to about $7 billion. Is it better for the owners of those companies to suffer a total loss or for taxpayers to lose $25 billion? The answer is obvious. As such, the only case for a bailout is if it would force major changes on the industry. That won't happen with current management in place or with giveaway union contracts that make the companies unviable.

These aren't temporary problems. They've been brewing for decades, as management agreed over and over to labor deals that now financially strangle the industry. Yet, UAW's Gettelfinger claims the weak economy is to blame for the industry's woes. Nonsense. As blogger (and former corporate CEO) Jim Manzi notes, American carmakers in 1960 owned 90% of the U.S. auto market. This year, for the first time ever, that share slipped below 50%.
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Or An Auto-Industry Bailout?

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 8:06:16 PM
The taint of loserdom is on the Big Three. “Next Under the Bus: UAW?”
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Greg Craig, Lawyer Of The Left

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 8:02:26 PM
Obama seeks the Left's counsel. “The ‘Innocent’”
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Unhinged

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 6:37:42 PM

Video: Time for another “enraged anti-Prop 8 mob” video

There’s only one man now who can rescue Prop 8 opponents from the terrible trappings of democracy — and luckily, not only has he had a lot of practice at it, this particular issue is one of his specialties. Expect a major 5-4 equal protection decision striking down the referendum sometime next year, with you-know-who writing for the majority. A surefire consolation prize for conservatives? Angriest Scalia dissent evah.

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Funding Mechanism For The Radical Left

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 6:12:16 PM

Prescience on the CRA and the current financial debacle

Two months ago, I noted how a September 1999 article in the Los Angeles Times praising the Clinton administration’s enforcement efforts of the Community Reinvestment Act inadvertently showed how they created the housing bubble by praising all of the excesses of the White House and Congress.  King BanaianCity Journal article from the following year that took a much-less complimentary look at the CRA and government use of it — and predicted almost exactly what would follow eight years later.  In fact, it also predicted the scope of the collapse

It did much more than that, though — it empowered “community organizers” as the shock troops of the CRA
 pointed out a

And what did all of this activity do?  It forced banks to make bad loans, and in some cases without down payments — which splintered the informal CRA alliance of community organizers.  One group in particular, NACA, declared down payment requirements “racist” and insisted on issuing mortgages without them.  Even other CRA-based activists saw the damage this would do to marginal neighborhoods, but eventually Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac incentivized sub-prime loans so much that no-down mortgages became de rigeur.

Now that these loans have begun defaulting at high rates, what will happen to these neighborhoods?  Probably what Howard Husock predicted in early 2000: they will deteriorate, thanks to a lack of commitment by homeowners already or almost forced out.  Thanks to a lack of credit, it may take years to even start reversing that damage.



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After The Election

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 6:06:01 PM
"Our subprime mortgage debacle has led to this global mess. So it's only correct to say that the worldwide recession has been brought on by the Democrat Party."

Will Obama close down Guantanamo Bay? He promised to, but there's also a chance he'll keep it open after making some changes. Don't forget: the press will always let Obama blame Bush.

"If Obama shuts down Guantanamo We're should call it The Terrorist Bailout Plan. We're essentially going to bail these people out. In fact, we'll probably make a settlement with them before any lawsuit."

Naming Hillary Secretary of State is good for Obama. It keeps an enemy close, eliminates her as a rival, and gets her out of the way of the Democrats in the Senate.
 
Will Men Dominate Obama's Cabinet?

"We have a national problem: way too many people give a damn what people think of us in these various hellholes that harbor people who want to kill us. They give a damn what people think of them individually, too -- I'm telling you, that's death.
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The Left Hates America

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 4:09:15 PM
This is from a book by Daniel J. Flynn;

Is America really that bad?  It is if you accept the lies and propaganda from the anti-American Left in our own country.  This dismal, distorted view of the greatest, freest nation in history comes from a Left who would rather idolize Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro than honor George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  They trample the Constitution while hiding behind the First Amendment, and their idea of displaying the American flag is setting it on fire and parading it through the streets.  Yes this is a Left comprised of people who truly hate their country, and they will stop at nothing to tear her down-smashing our liberty in the process.

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A Lost Generation For The GOP?

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 3:41:48 PM

Youth vote slipping away from GOP?

We heard over and over again during the election that the youth movement propelled Barack Obama to victory.  That turns out to be somewhat overblown, Pew Research
concludes, but Republicans shouldn’t take much comfort in the exaggeration.  Over the last two presidential elections, the GOP has lost the youth vote by sharply increasing margins — and may have lost an entire generation of voters (via
Brian Faughnan)

Obama would have won the election without the wide split in the youth vote, Pew concludes, although the scope of the victory would have been narrower.  John McCain could have won Indiana and North Carolina but still would have lost Ohio and Florida.  The youth vote comprised 18% of the electorate, according to CNN’s exit polling, and were 17% in 2004, almost no change at all.  Obama didn’t inspire a spike in participation, but he did manage to significantly change the voting pattern in this bloc. 

That could spell trouble for Republicans in the future.  People tend to remain in their political paradigm, and the GOP has not spent enough time making conservatism relevant to the younger voter.  This is a remarkably poor performance, especially on the fiscal impact of expanded government, by which younger voters will be most affected as Medicare and Social Security reach their crisis points.  Obama’s success in wooing younger voters to the Democratic Party may result in a gap which could take Republicans decades to resolve.

Or perhaps not.  If Obama decides to pursue mandatory national service on the basis of Rahm Emanuel’s proposal, those same young voters may suddenly discover their inner libertarians and become more open to reconsidering the Republican message.  If they watch the Obama administration shovel money in corporate bailouts for the next couple of years, fiscal conservatism may regain its luster.  The Republicans, though, have to have a positive agenda for rational government, rebuild its credibility, and most of all start paying attention to younger voters when addressing issues on the stump.  Barack Obama didn’t win their votes by accident two weeks

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Vanquished

Posted by Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 3:33:08 PM

Video: Great moments in awkward photo-op history

The path to reelection runs through stabilizing the economy and disarming Iranian nukes and the Taliban. Everything else is gravy.

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